by Tanya Huff
“The mid Atlantic? Are you sure?”
“Get it back to me Wednesday and I don’t care what you do with it.”
For the first time since they’d met, Eineen seemed honestly amused. “Go. The music calls.”
“Yeah, Chuck, the music calls.” Mark held the door open. “Let’s answer it, shall we. We’ve got less than an hour before we have to head back to the festival, so chop chop. You remember the festival, right?” He stood aside as Tanis left the cottage, her eyes dry but her nose red. “We’ve put together a band for it and everything.”
Muttering apologies to Mark, Charlie waved good-bye and went in to take her place in the circle.
“Play it acoustic today, but we’ll plug in when we play the park.”
Mark had written the lyrics to “Wild Road Beyond” a couple of years ago and had been messing with the melody ever since. The heartbeat of the bodhran stayed consistent, but every other part had been discarded and rewritten at least twice. Other songs had come and gone—they had three of his originals on the set list—but this one had never been played in front of an audience. “It’s still missing something,” was Mark’s only explanation.
Because it meant so much to Mark, she blocked out everything else she had going on—Selkies and Auntie Catherine and Tuesday’s ritual and her sisters and Jack and Allie—and when they finally put all the parts together . . .
“All right, people, let’s put our grown-up pants on and get through this once without stopping as the actress said to the bishop.”
. . . Charlie threw herself into the song. Her left hand flew up and down the fretboard, her right moved between dancing the pick over the strings and slamming out the chords. She slid effortlessly up into her falsetto for the descant harmony, winding her voice around Mark’s lead. Shelly’s rhythm throbbed in her blood and Tim’s keyboard stitched them all together as Bo’s fiddle called them to the wild side and took them home.
They were dripping wet and breathing hard as they finished.
Bo’s last note wailed off into perfect silence . . .
. . . shattered into pieces by a crack of thunder.
“Holy shit!” Shelly jerked, flailed, and just managed to catch her bass before it hit the floor. “That sounded close.”
They made the porch more or less together, Bo out in front still holding his instrument, Tim bringing up the rear, having gotten tangled in the accordion strap.
The sky to the northeast looked like a bruise, purple and green and likely to be painful if anyone could come into contact with it. A canvas beach chair tumbled past the cottage, rolled along the gravel by the wind. Thunder cracked again.
“It’s moving fast.”
“Too fast. What?” Bo demanded when Mark poked him with a stick. “It’s what you say when someone says that.”
“And besides,” Shelly added, “that fucker is moving too damned fast. Storms don’t come in like that, not from the northeast. Northwest maybe.”
“We need to get to the festival. The festival,” Charlie repeated when no one moved, “where they’ve got a crowd of people to get to safety, and a shitload of stuff to batten down.”
“Most of those people are from the island,” Bo said, eyes locked on a line of distant lightning. “You really think they’ll need our help?”
The thunder cracked before the lightning dimmed.
“Yes.”
By the time they piled out of the van at the festival gate, the first drops of rain had started to fall. Although people were jostling for position, arms loaded down with blankets and coolers, trying to move en masse to their cars and avoid a soaking, no one had panicked yet.
But it wouldn’t be long.
The potential for panic was there in every wide-eyed glance up at the sky. In the face of every parent who held their child closer than the current situation required. In the expressions of the locals who knew storms didn’t come in like that.
The parking lot—field—required the patience of a saint to get out of at the best of times. Charlie shot a glance back over her shoulder at the roiling clouds. Which this wasn’t.
“Tim! Mark!” She had to shout to be heard and even then the wind tried to snatch the words away. “One fender bender in that lot . . .”
“On it!”
Shelly grabbed her arm and together they ducked a plastic water bottle. “I’ll head for the booths! They’ll need extra hands!”
“Not you!” Charlie snagged a handful of Bo’s shirt as he tried to follow Shelly. “You head for the stage.” She dragged him around, shifted her grip to his left wrist, wet her fingertip and draw a charm on the polished wood of his violin.
He stared at it like he’d forgotten he was holding it. “What are you . . . ?”
“Doesn’t matter. Get to the stage and play!”
“Play what?”
At least he hadn’t asked why, knowing as well as she did that if anything would keep this particular crowd from panic, it’d be music. “Something familiar, something that’ll stand against the storm.”
He stood for a moment, frozen in place, then he nodded once and ran, fighting his way in against the exodus.
Charlie followed, hauled a small child up off the ground by one skinny arm and thrust her at her father, swore as an abandoned lawn chair slammed into her shins, saw a man with a fiddle case . . .
She reached him just as he settled a four-year-old boy on his hip. Recognized the two kids hanging onto Neela’s hands. The family was a very small island of calm in the growing chaos.
“Gavin!” Had to be Gavin. “You’re needed on stage!”
“What?”
She turned him until he could see Bo, bending to plug in. “If enough people pause to listen . . .”
“They’ll get hit by lightning?” But he was already handing the boy to his mother and opening his case. He whipped his head around to glare at her when Charlie reached past him and drew the charm. His instrument was visibly older than Bo’s; had been played harder.
“What do you think . . . ?”
“Gavin!” Neela’s eyes flashed black, rim to rim. “Let it go. Just play.”
He scowled, looked from his wife to Charlie and back again. “Is this . . . ?”
“Yes. Hurry!”
“You three stay with your mother. Help her!” Violin and bow in the same hand, he ruffled his other hand through his eldest’s hair, kissed Neela quickly, and ran for the stage.
The rain seemed to be rolling off Neela’s hair without being absorbed. Which was hardly surprising, all things considered. “Do you need . . . ?” Charlie began.
“You have other things to do, Charlotte Gale.”
Someone screamed. And that was all it took for people to start charging toward the exit like the storm wouldn’t hit them if they were off the festival grounds.
“It’s not that the wind blows,” she muttered, as a baseball cap smacked against the side of her head, “it’s what the wind blows.” It was the punchline of a joke about being out in hurricanes although, at the moment, Charlie didn’t find it that funny.
Ducking debris, she cut another two fiddlers out of the crowd. No more time to draw charms, she realized, shoving her reinforcements toward the stage. Gavin and Bo would have to suffice if the power went out.
The rain had started to pound down. Each individual drop hitting hard, then they were hitting so close together it was like being pounded by a wet fist.
Up on the stage, pressed in against the back where the rain couldn’t reach them. Five, no six, fiddlers played “Bandlings,” one of the classic Cape Breton reels. Gavin must’ve grabbed a couple more musicians on his way up. The sound system, put together by people who understood maritime weather, continued to hold.
As the speakers crackled to life and the reel danced out on the wind, heads jerked toward the stage. And okay, maybe more people were thinking are they fucking insane than let’s stand together against the storm, but hey, whatever worked.
Lightning / thunder.
Ears ringing, blinking away the afterimages, Charlie wondered why popular opinion was thunder/lightning when the lightning always came first.
Lightning / thunder.
Or came too close to call it.
Praying that last impact hadn’t been with anything living, she found herself in front of one of the luthier’s booths—still mostly standing. With the storm and the music sizzling together under her skin, she reached without thinking for the last of the unpacked guitars, pulling a pick from her pocket with the other hand.
Without a strap, she folded her legs and dropped cross-legged to the ground, water seeping immediately through her shorts. Chin tucked in to keep from drowning like a turkey, she played the two sounds together.
Music. Storm.
The song changed. “The Battle of Killicrankie.”
The fiddler in her head took up the harmony line.
Should’ve grabbed a piper, she thought and swore under her breath as she lost her grip on the wet pick.
No time to find another. No choice but to dig her thumb against the strings.
The wind shifted and slapped a wall of water against her. If she’d been standing, it would have knocked her over. Her palm protecting the sound hole as much as possible, she kept playing, forcing the storm to the music’s parameters. The four un-charmed instruments fought her almost as hard as the storm, but she pulled them in, pulled it all together, played it . . .
Played it.
Played it.
Stopped it.
Later, they said the storm blew back out to sea as quickly as it blew in.
No one mentioned that storms didn’t do that.
Or that as the soggy people started putting things back together, the sky was a brilliant blue as far as anyone could see, and the sea was so calm the seals looked like stepping stones bobbing in the water, all of them staring toward shore.
SIX
AS THOUGH TO MAKE UP for Saturday, Sunday’s weather was beautiful. Sunny and warm, the sky looked as though it had been scrubbed. With none of the Selkies about—Tanis had wiped her eyes and told Bo she had family obligations and Neela had gone off with her kids—Charlie concentrated on the festival, making notes on the competition, jamming with the competition, and explaining an infinite number of times why she had a Band-aid on her right thumb. She hadn’t even realized she’d strummed it bloody playing the storm.
She bought the guitar.
Her bank account held twenty-two dollars more than the reduced asking price and, given what it had been through, the odds were high no one else would be able to play it anyway. Back on her hillock, listening to Five by Five rock out to “Ghosts of Calico” by Enter the Haggis, Charlie changed the heavies that had been on it for mediums—the luthier had set it up for bluegrass and, evidently, storm calling. Although she’d changed strings thousands of times on dozens of instruments, she drew blood with every string. Was it because the old strings had been blooded and that was what the guitar now required or was she just short on sleep, a little bit stoned, and three beers into the afternoon.
When she wandered away from the party at the campground that night to stand on the beach, she could see the darker lines of seals hanging vertically in the water, watching the shore. No, watching her. She walked to the right, their heads swiveled to follow. They didn’t follow the couple holding hands, trying to convince each other that what they felt was real and not a result of the music. They didn’t follow the four kids up way past their bedtime too buzzed on sugar to sleep anyway. They followed her. Only her.
It was impossible to tell at this distance, in the dark, if they were merely seals but swimming out to check seemed like a very bad idea. As Aston had discovered, seals bit.
And Selkies . . .
Now she couldn’t stop wondering if Eineen was a biter.
The fiddler in her head got out only the first three bars of “Haste to the Wedding” before Charlie shut it down.
Next morning, Shelly’s cheerful whistling of the same tune jerked her out of a sound sleep.
“Good night?” Charlie yawned without lifting her head as the other woman bounced into the small room.
Shelly grinned. “Not bad.” Then she frowned and sat on the edge of her unused bed, legs filling the minimal space between them, right knee pressed against Charlie’s left elbow. “Tell me you didn’t not hook up because you’re not pining for Eineen. Because, sweetie, that’s never going to happen.”
“You know her?”
“Oh, yeah, you see her at the festivals all the time. Last year Mark thought she was one of the secret judges, but it seems she just really likes the music. And I saw her at the protests for stopping the seal hunt; she’s part of some environmental watchdog group. Also, I think she introduced Tanis to Bo—they’re related somehow. But my point is very, very straight.”
“I know. It’s . . .” Charlie flopped over on her back and sighed up at the ceiling. “It’s complicated. I look at her and I want her, but I swear, I’m not pining. I just didn’t feel like partying.”
“Steve Morris was asking after you.”
“Did he have the money he owes me for that session work?”
“I doubt it since he had a plan to make it up to you.”
“Do another CD and he’ll pay me for both?”
“It’s like you know him.” Straightening her leg, Shelly kicked her in the thigh. “Now get up. We have to be out of the cottage by eleven and it’s nine forty-five.”
Grinneal was off until Wednesday afternoon when they’d meet up at Cheticamp in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park for a paid gig. According to Mark, the Wednesday ceilidh was essentially a barn dance, but it made the tourists happy and that was all that mattered.
“I will not forget we have a sound check at three,” Charlie insisted as Mark glared at her through two very bloodshot eyes. “I won’t be even be late. I’m just going to help Tanis look for the heirloom she’s lost.”
Arms folded, holding a pair of sticks in both hands like Egyptian regalia, Mark’s glare morphed into a puzzled frown. “Hadn’t realized you two were so close, Chuck.”
“We’re not. But I’ve got some time to kill, and if she’s happy, Bo’s happy.” They moved in unison to avoid being run down by Tim carrying three accordion cases and the coffeemaker. “A happy fiddler makes for a happy band.”
“So you’re doing it for the band?”
She grasped his shoulder, cupping the spider tat, and drew a small, reassuring charm on damp skin with the edge of her thumb as she squeezed. “I’m selfless that way.”
Unwilling to chance the Wood with a passenger and a new, and potentially dangerous guitar, Charlie left it and her clean clothes with Shelly, borrowed a backpack for her dirty clothes, and went out to meet Tanis and Bo. Bo continued to take the world is wider than you imagine remarkably well although Charlie was beginning to think it had as much to do with Tanis not allowing enough oxygen into his system as it did with Selkie brainwashing.
Watching her rub the soft curve of her hip against Bo’s groin, Charlie had to admit it was an effective way of keeping Bo distracted.
“Bo? There’s a familiar truck approaching.”
He moved his lips far enough from Tanis’ mouth to say, “My brother’s picking me up.”
Charlie recognized the driver. “Your brother have a bad ’70s pornstache?”
Impossible to pucker while smiling that broadly. “No such thing as a good one.”
“Hey, dipshit!” The mustache didn’t seem to affect his volume. “Stop molesting that woman and get in the truck.Your audition’s at two fifteen, and Dad’ll want to see you first. Hey, Tanis, still not interested in trading up?”
“Audition?” Charlie asked as Tanis went to the driver’s window.
“Symphony Nova Scotia. Dad’s Assistant Principal Cello and Feroz is Second Bassoon.” When Charlie lifted a brow, he snickered. “He shaves during the season. Mostly I audition to make my father happy, but I wouldn’t turn d
own a steady job over the winter either.”
“You go where the music calls,” Tanis murmured, tucking back under his arm.
When he bent his head to kiss her, Charlie shared a look with Feroz and flicked Bo’s ear. “Two fifteen audition,” she reminded him. “Go. Call her when you’re done.”
“Do you need a lift . . . ?”
“No.”
“Is it . . . ?” He widened his eyes and waggled his brows up and down.
“Yes, it’s a bad Groucho Marx impersonation. Get in the truck. Tanis, get the door. You know,” she sighed as the truck finally headed away from the cottages, and Tanis gave a weak sniffle, “nothing against Bo, he’s a great guy and one hell of a fiddler, but you don’t have to lock your landlife to a man.”
“Actually . . .” she paused to blow her nose. “. . . we do.”
“You do?”
Tanis smiled and spread her hands, the webbing evident. “We leave the sea to dance in the moonlight and fall in love. That’s the Rule my people live by. Fortunately, we fall in love easily. With men,” she added hurriedly. “Eineen can’t . . .”
“I know.”
“But you still want her.”
Her personal soundtrack agreed with a spirited “Cherish the Ladies.”
First Shelly, now Tanis; apparently, she’d been more obvious about her attraction to the Selkie than she’d thought. Charlie spread her hands as Tanis had, letting the gesture answer, then turned and headed behind the cottages, Tanis falling into step beside her.
“Have you tried wanting men?” she asked after a moment.
He’d been a strong man once, broad shoulders, large hands, skin browned by the wind and the sun and sea.
Charlie grinned. “Not since Friday,” she said as the fiddler segued into “Boys of the Town.”
Too innately graceful to trip, Tanis paused for a moment, then hurried to catch up. “But . . .”
“Human rules are less specific than the Rules of the Fey.”
“You’re not entirely Human,” she pointed out.